Purple / Lilacs

Agastache ‘Liquorice White’ has tall spikes of white lipped flowers and like all Agastache produces copious amounts of nectar for bees and butterflies to feast upon. Flowering late in the season, it is a boon for building up bees’ honey reserves before winter and will produce a honey surplus where drifts are grown.

This is a stunning fashionable plant, with globes of rosy-purple crowded spherical umbels, and strap shaped leaves. The flowers are very long lasting and help fill that awkward gap between the later spring bulbs and the perennials.

Anchusa officinalis is noted for its deep sapphire-blue flowers that are extremely attractive to wildlife. This relative of borage blooms from late spring right through until first frosts. In the garden it can be used as part of wildlife friendly planting scheme, they are much loved by almost all bee species.

Anemonopsis macrophylla is one of the most beautiful and elegant plants that you could wish for. Slow growing and rarely seen, it bears nodding, opalescent white flowers on slender elegant spikes, but this emphatic woodlander is not in fact difficult to grow if given humus-rich, semi-shaded conditions.

Aubrieta ‘Royal Violet’ is an excellent choice, they flower so prolifically, that the blossoms almost completely cover the foliage below. Hardy to -23°C (-10°F), the foliage of Aubrieta is evergreen and provides year-round cover. RHS AGM.

Buddleia blooms all summer long with an intoxicating scent just as overwhelming as their colour show. There is no denying that these shrubs are butterfly magnets. If you plant one, they will find it. Have your camera ready!

Prichard’s Variety is a cottage-garden classic, appreciated for its long bloom time, stately presence and violet-blue clusters of flowers. The plants have an upright habit and deep green leaves that provide a lovely backdrop to the handsome blooms.

Centaurea cyanus 'Mauve Ball' is a new addition to the series. A double flowered cultivar with wonderful fluffy, lilac-mauve flowers on densely branched upright plants. A favorite annual flower and cottage garden staple, one single flower looks like a burst of fireworks.

This beautiful highly versatile, aristocratic border plant has become very much in vogue in recent years. Oval, fleshy blue-green leaves spiral up the stem with tightly packed, sea blue bracts - and then the finale - small clusters of rich purple-blue tubular, nodding flowers which are adored by bees.

The 'Wizard' Series is an excellent example of the new developments of coleus, it is the best seed raised strain for bedding and containers. From the brilliant apricot-bronze Sunset, to red-veined maroon Velvet Red, each is a distinctive work of art. The heart-shaped leaves show their colour early and keeps its hues right through the worst summer heat and humidity. Available in single colours or as a mix.

What gardener with a heart and soul could resist the spring flowers of Corydalis, whose winged petals with upswept spurs suggest a flight of elfin butterflies. These woodland ephemerals are highly useful at the front of the border, with miniature bulbs such as crocus, muscari or scillas.

The Magic Fountains series is a dwarf delphinium that grows to around 75 to 90cm. The plants have a good compact habit and because of their short stature and healthy thick stems does not require staking. 'Magic Fountains Lavender' is a a gorgeous lavender, each bloom has a white centre, called the 'bee'.

Delphinium 'Black Knight' produces gorgeous spires that are laden with intensely coloured deep purple flowers. These dark-eyed delphiniums are stunning when planted in bold clumps in the garden and are one of the most spectacular cut flowers you can grow.

Often called the Queen of the Border, Delphinium 'Guinevere blooms with spires of Lavender rose with white bees that bloom the first year from a December greenhouse sowing. Bring a touch of nostalgia back to the garden, they are worth almost any effort to grow because they are so beautiful.

Dierama “Blackberry Bells” is a vigorous hybrid Dierama. It has inheriting some of the darkness from 'Cosmos' but with much larger, deep purple-maroon flared trumpets that dangle from graceful arching stems. A desirable addition to any herbaceous border or gravel garden.

With good summer colour Erigeron “Azure Fairy” have similar flowers to the autumn blooming Michaelmas Daisies, but produce a summer-long display over a bushy clump of green foliage. They will grow at a fast rate in any reasonable well drained garden soil.

Justifiably popular and very easy to grow from seed, Eschscholzia californica are one of the easiest and most colourful annuals to grow. 'Purple Gleam' is an elegant and unusual cultivar of the California poppy, with single, satiny blooms in lovely shades of purple-pink to lilac-purple.

With flowers that resemble a rose, Eschscholzia californica 'Rosa Romantica' is a lovely and quite unique California Poppy, the petals are streaked in the most romantic of shades, soft pink-rose and salmon-fuchsia overlay creamy white on each elaborately painted petal.

A beautiful, robust ground cover variety of the every popular Geranium sanguineum; ‘Vision Violet’ produces masses of large luminescent violet flowers from early spring to summer. The blooms cover this compact, mounding plant with intricately cut leaves.

Dames Rocket produce flowers varying in colour from deep rich purple, through all the paler lilac shades to white. Highly attractive to bees and other beneficial insects, the fragrant flowers perfume the air in late spring and early summer evenings.

Dames Rocket was the favorite flower of Marie Antoinette. The genus name Hesperis is Greek for evening, a reference to this plant's aroma becoming ever more conspicuous towards evening. The fragrance is as sweet as a violet's. The night-scented stock is a close relative.

Hosta ventricosa is a very special species. In Japan it is named 'Murasaki Giboshi' meaning ‘dark-purple flowered Hosta’. Sturdy and dependable, the plant forms a medium sized mound of rich, dark green foliage with deeply veined, heart-shaped leaves.